Roasting at Twenty Below

Tastefully Simple's recommendation on the box is that this cremy wild rice soup is "covenient for college students, and great for camping trips." Not really, at 90 minutes cooking time. It was good though, when I added by half a completely home made chicken dumpling soup w lots of vegetables to it.

But, it is apparently quite a successfull company.

Great weather for an old fashioned pot roast w/ chuck ( 3 lbs) and plenty of carrots and onions. They glaze and carmelize so nicely. Three hours total. Add the vegetables at about half way. Keep everything covered. Brown the roast in a little oil after you have seasoned it w/ salt, pepper, and garlic. Add 1 cup water and 1 cup wine(red or white) just before you put it in the oven. You could add rosemary and potatoes ( @ 2 hrs) to the pot/pan/roaster, too, to make it even more interesting and complete, and special. It is comfort food at it's best. The kind of food a body craves/ yearns for this time of the year when it is 20 below and the wind continues from the northwest.

If you are using venison, add bacon,( 3 or 4 strips thick cut) as you put it in the oven. Or larding, as DeGroot recommends, which I spoke about but have not tried. I promise to try it, and will let you know if it is worth the work. Where to get a "larding needle"?

Not Tasteful, Not Simple, Just Stupid

I am looking at a box of Tastefully Simple Creamy Wild Rice Soup Mix - " the food you love, the time you deserve." Directions call for 60 to 90 minutes of cooking. Thirty seven ingredients are listed on the box. That is not simple or time saving.

I think that Tastefully Simple is a home party food company, perhaps a form of multi level marketing. You invite guests to a host's home and cook from an attractive box, and get people to join and buy their food products, and in turn sponsor a food party and get someone to join, who sponsors a food party and gets people to join and so on.

What I have learned about cooking from a box is that there is usually a lot of salt and fat in the ingredients, and some poison, but it is usually faster than this wild rice soup mix from Tastefully Simple. Why anyone would buy this product is beyond me.

I am cooking it now. It is sticking to the bottom of the pan, even tho' I have it set on very low. I count somewhat fewer than 37 grains of wild rice in total. What is this product. Gawd I hate cooking out of a box.

Cream of wild rice soup ( always with chicken) is way over done, anyway. Every where you go, especially up north. What about a hearty broth loaded w/ root vegetables and others and plenty of garlic, and lentils or beans( any kind) and chicken if you really want it ( or any wild bird - pheasant, grouse, duck) and of course the substantial and nutty wild rice. It wouldn't be an artery clogger either.

De Groot on Venison and Chocolate

De Groot also writes of venison with chocolate sauce, first involving a 3 day "proper marinade in aromatic wine." The whole or half leg of venison(about 10 lbs) is first larded w/ 10" x 3/8" salt pork which has been marinated in dark rum. Larding makes sense in a lean meat, tho' I have never done it - after all, what would ground meat(burger) be w/o the fat ground in?

At first reading the recipe appears extensive and labor intensive, but essentially de Groot is marinating the meat in red wine and in the classic French mirepoix which is with carrots, onions, celery and parsley w/ the addition of "aromatics" which include bay leaf, cloves, garlic, and sherry vinegar. You make the sauce w/ the marinade and fruits like raisins and currants, along w/ some rum and unsweetened chocolate and a half pound of butter. Wow. This is indeed a sauce, distinctly sweet and sour w/ chocolate. He roasts the venison to med rare( 130 degrees).

I will try this recipe and report back. De Groot was an absolute perfectionist; recipes being done and refined many times untill they were just right. That, along w/ his heightened sense of taste(smell) may assure success. We'll see.

Roy Andries de Groot

If there ever was a food snob, he is/was Roy Andries de Groot. You have got to be good to be a snob of his caliber. His name was also Baron de Groot, for a while, before he became a U. S. citizen and a brilliant and renowned food critic and writer in America. He became blind when he was about 50 yrs old( 1965) as a final result of injuries suffered in the London Blitz during WW2.

So how do you cook and write if you are blind? With an assistant, of course. Do this, do that. Get this, get that. I imagine the sense of taste( including smell) would be greatly heightened. I met a woman who was his assistant - writer, cook, go- getter, Girl Friday - near Hillman, Mn of all places,( about 15 mi west of Mille Lacs) at a mutual friend's home, recently. He was so demanding that she quit after spending some months w/ him during the 70's in Paris and the Far East.

He writes of turtle and provides a recipe for soup in his 1966 book, Feasts For All Seasons. A rich and aromatic soup including allspice, basil, bay leaf, fennel, and sage among other ingredients, that is topped off table side with sherry.

I will be adapting his recipe to mine and serving it at Porky Pine during this Lenten season. Call ahead to see if it is available,. 320-277-9505.

Roy Andries de Groot died, tragically, in front of his wife and daughter of a self inflicted gunshot wound, in 1983 when he was 73 yrs old. My heart goes out to his family. Food, like many things I have discovered over the years, brings out the best and the worst in many of us. I hope that his family remembers the best.

Turtle Time

Fat Tuesday is done and gone. It is turtle eating time. Turtle is ok to eat during Lent if you are a Catholic. It is ok for others to eat it too, even Lutherans, Baptists, and Christian Missionary Alliance members.

The Catholic Church in Ohio has an exclusion for muskrat, which means that if you live in Ohio it is ok to eat muskrat on Fridays, though I don't feel that it is ok for anyone to eat muskrat anytime, really. Unless you do.

We were serving turtle last year on Friday nights during Lent in a cafe that I worked in near Pierz. Even the kids around Pierz like turtle. When teenage girls like it, you know that there must be something to it. We would get the turtle from a local meat mkt. Portions w/ bone and meat the size of drummies, which we would boil for about 2 hours to get tender. The drummie like portions would be cooled, dipped in beer batter and deep fried until golden, and served with BBQ sauce for dunking. Very good.

A turtle has at least 3 kinds of meat which correspond in color and taste to pork, duck and chicken. It is rich, and the broth from the boiling should be reserved and strained in order to make a soup with carrots and celery, onions, and green split peas and/or lentils.. An excellent soup that is a tradition in some New Orleans restaurants like Commander's Palace, where both Paul Prudhomme and Emeril have worked.

The Fox's Teeth Are In The Bunny, and Nothing Can Remove Them, Honey

Ouch. That's just like real life. Some things you can't go back and change. Like the results of last night's Super Bowl. I don't think a one of us is not happy for Eli Manning. The title is from a poem on The Writer's Almanac(MPR) this morning.

" Hi, honey, you're home" is a part of another.

"Real Age" also writes of "honey" this AM in the form of buckwheat honey. Dark and rich and sweet and better for you than lighter ones, they say - more phenols. Too strong of a flavor for some baking apparently, but it sure would be great in some breads. I will look for it. It would be wonderful in tea, too, and oatmeal.

Didn't Judy Collins sing a song about cooking w/ honey? - " We aaaall cook with honey......"

As the sweet of a glaze for ham and gamebirds w/ mustard, allspice, and apricot jam. Hot peppers for the fowl, too.

" Make Me Something I Like"

I want to remind you that I work ( cook) at Porky Pine Bar and Grill on Wednesday evenings ( 4 PM - 8 PM), and Friday days( 8 Am to 4 PM). On either shift, I usually do something special, or you can ask me to "make me something I like." I will ask you a few questions, and then I will do it.

Porky Pine is about 10 mi west of Onamia on Highway # 27. It is casual. If you want a good bottle of wine w/ dinner, you will have to bring your own. The corking fee is cheap. No one has ever done that, to my knowledge. I think it is free. Yes, it is. We Have Sutter Home, which is ok table wine. A decent selection of beers.

You can bring your own fresh fish.

The kitchen is clean. The refrigeration is good.

As Bob Barker used to say, " Come on Down."